And Edison definitely is. What’s she gonna do? To whom will she turn for advice? Any guesses?*
And, oh that Captain Eleanor. At first I was just gonna draw her with a bug on her finger. But hey, what’s the fun in that?
Next time-Edison makes Eleanor… oh wait, that might give a clue as to who she’s gonna ask. Guess you’ll just have to stick around to find out!
*Hint: It’s not Miffy.
I’m gonna guess Anya, seeing how she practically has a home address in the middle of the bermuda love triangle.
The… Bermuda love triangle…
That is a brilliant coinage!
I can’t imagine finding an appropriate occasion to use it. My life is boring that way.
melaredblu is a genius. “Bermuda Love Triangle” is brilliant, and will show up somewhere.
I only steal from the best.
Also, “Bermuda Love Triangle” would make a great TV show. Sort of a “Fantasy Island” crossed with”Kolchak: The Night Stalker.”
Certainly a line worth stealing
I’m gonna say Anya too, though I’m not quite sure how valuable her advice is going to be. She’s stumbled through a few romantic minefields herself.
Anya would be a good choice. She’s known Larry for years, and she and Edison have had some time together (even though Edison doesn’t remember much of it).
Though she wouldn’t be much of a disinterested party…
Charlie, where your stories are concerned, there *are* no disinterested parties.
Alas! Poor computer! I knew him, Horatio!
A fellow of infinite…jests?
Hmmm… Infinite jests, jousts, j… A computer of infinite… do-loops?
A computer of infinite annoyances, for one. Ah well, I got my money’s worth out of the old girl.
Fortunately, there are some computer geniuses among the Webcomic Underdogs who’re willing to help an old computer idiot get a new box.
Hmmm – I’m caught up again. I have this weird situation in which I compute in Chrome instead of Firefox now (YouTube issues) and didn’t transfer any of my bookmarks. So I forget to check my webcomics for a month or two at a time. Then I do and my favorites are all having issues so they only have posted two or three comics since I last checked. *sad*
I hope you can get the computer problems worked out quickly – and I REALLY hope your hard drive didn’t go sideways on you.
Thanks, Tru. It looks like everything went sideways. I’ve got a lot backed up to flash drives, so I didn’t lose too many comics.
As far as updating, well… since I work 50+ hours/week (poverty), I may have to go to a once every two weeks update schedule. Once I buy a new computer and get it all set up, of course.
The good news is that this week, er, last week’s strip is ready for lettering, and next week’s is going to look really good.
I was checking to see if you’re on Facebook, as you do have a FB icon up there, but it doesn’t work. There are … a lot of you there. I am laughing quite hard at a quote snapshot I can see on one of them: “Old Farmer’s advice: … Keep skunks and bankers at a distance…”
I like the Old Farmer’s advice!
I’m the one with Caliban peeking out from the discombobulationotron. Ya can’t miss it. Send me a Friend Request!
Any updates on when you might have updates?
This whole dead-computer business makes me nervous…. I should get a new one myself
You should definitely back up your files, right now, Pops. I didn’t, and lost a lot of art. Since I keep all my original pages, I can rescan a lot. Still, over 100+ pages are lost.
New computer is up and running, and the GIMP finally recognizes the same fonts it recognized before.
Now if I could get my scanner to work…
Fingers crossed that we’re back by next weekend.
Charlie! Didn’t this happen to you once before? I would have thought you had LEARNED about backing up. (guiltily plugs in backup drive)
It makes me mildly ill how much data you’re having to struggle with right now. Keeping the original art is great – as long as it’s physically in the real world, but what if you only worked with this magic box?
DO YOUR BACKUPS! I hear you can even program your computer to do them automatically – and I know Costco sells external hard drives for seriously cheap.
Long long ago I had a friend who created a “magazine” for a local cable company and had such a shitty computer (and zero money) that in order to use, say, Photoshop, he had to uninstall Pagemaker, and temporarily install Photoshop, then uninstall it when he was done because his hard drive space was so limited. Kids these days don’t understand the struggle…..
And that shitty computer ran on *punch cards*! And KEROSENE!!!
My first computer ran on paper tape and cassette tapes, but not the same kind of cassette I recorded off the radio to. Nope these were over $10 per back when gas was $0.87/gallon and a standard audio cassette wouldn’t fit the drive. I haven’t had that computer since the late 1980s so I forgot the designation for them.
I think we should take up a collection to buy Charlie a new computer.
I’m serious. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on hard copies of Girl Genius, Schlock Mercenary, Drive, and As I Roved Out. Groovy, Kinda is my favorite and rates the same input. Charlie, how much do you need for a good rig? We can cover it!
Thank you Pops!
I got the new computer. A while back. Where to start?
So, after I draw a strip I scan it with my Mustek 11 x 17 scanner. Which I can’t do anymore, because it won’t work with this computer. Even though it’s the same operating system (remember this part).
Fine. I can go scan my strip at the local office supply store.
I used to letter my strip with Word (for the balloons) and GIMP 2.8 (for the lettering).
Except that now, I have the version of Word that doesn’t come with Copy/Paste functions. Don’t ask me why-it’s Microsoft. Okay, so I donwloaded Apache and use their balloons. Except that they don’t work the same way in GIMP.
And GIMP 2.8 no longer reads my comic font, even though GIMP 2.8 read it fine on the old computer using the same operating system. Ah, but GIMP 2.10 will read the fonts (they’re in Windows where GIMP could read them but won’t).
But GIMP 2.10 is so complicated that I can’t make most of the functions work, and when they do, they’re so unwieldy that I can’t get the comic to work.
The last picture I did (Hallow e’en crossover), I had to clean it up in GIMP 2.8, uninstall it, and then install 2.10 so I could letter. Which I couldn’t do in a way that would work for Groovy, Kinda.
So I have two comics drawn and cleaned up. I just can’t letter them.
I’m about ready to post them with the dialogue written underneath and just walk away from comics entirely.
Sorry to make you wait so long to hear from me. I’ve got some (Good, for a change) things going on in my life that’re taking up a lot of time and energy. I’ll keep you posted.
Oh. Software. Money can’t by me love, or you functionality, apparently.
I had to buy an after-market driver for my HP scanner because it was so old it wouldn’t work with Windows7. But the aftermarket driver works just fine.
I know nothing about GIMP, though I have heard the name. I’d be tempted to hand letter everything; I used to hand letter all day long (I’m an architect) before AutoCAD came along. I was far from the best, and I’m long out of practice, but it’s an option.
So I guess instead of buying you a computer I’ll just have to fund the first edition of the Groovy, Kinda Omnibus Collection.
I could hand-letter the strips. Goodness knows, I hand-lettered “The Adventures of Lyssa and the Pirates,” “The Importance of Being Eleanor,” and one “Utopia, Unlimited (not to mention various “Shanda the Panda” stories)”
Let me think about it…
I have had so much sorrow waiting for the next strip. Pops I’m with you, if Charlie needs a hand we can do something. Charlie, you could even auction off some old strips – the artwork alone would get you punters.
I’ll keep logging in to see where this may go.
Thank you, Chris. And thank you for the support. I can’t tell you how important you guys are to me.
I could sell off the old strips. I have almost every one. I should post a picture of all of them sometime.
If I were in Charlie’s place I couldn’ see letting go of original artwork piecemeal. Maybe as a collection, if there were a proper home for it. But selling or auctioning art made for the purpose of selling it? Yeah, I think that might be the way to go. I sort of assume the ads on this page don’t do much more than cover expenses, and probably not that since they’re all for other webcomics, making it a circular economy in a very small circle.
As I recollect, over the years there have been single panels made for Xmas, etc. These may be more easily saleable and wouldn’t mean Charlie having to break up his artwork.
I have also contemplated, from time to time, printing out each sheet to compile a real, easy to read folder for my ancient eyes. Could we crowd-source a book? Groovy Kinda can be split into the early years, then move on, so there would be sequential volumes. This would require some work, funding (crowd sourcing) and help (much of this can be 9done online by some of us).
Food for thought.
I’m all for it, but I know almost nothing about the process. I think other frequent posters might have enough first hand experience to offer guidance, and of course Charlie himself knows (or used to know) some fairly successful dead tree comics empressarii.
Key questions would be: What is a minimum economical press run? and How many regular readers does GK have? If you need to print 1000 copies to keep the per-each cost reasonable, but a typical GK strip only gets 200 hits, it ain’t gonna work. If it routinely gets 2000 hits, well, 50% penetration is pie-in-the-sky but we can dream….
Those who have done this before can offer insight into press run size and market penetration. Do the Foglios or Taylers or Dave Kellett or Alexis Flower or others foĺlow GK and wish to comment?